What I'm reading - 9/20/06

One of my newest readers (I think I'm up to 10 now!) asked me what I'm reading, and I figured that would make as much sense to blog about as anything else I write, so here goes...

In addition to daily news/politics articles and columns (the sources of which you can figure out by following the links in my need to read posts), I'm a pretty heavy book reader, too. Using public transportation dictates that you listen to inane conversations about the idiocy of last night's "Deal or No Deal" contestant, deafen yourself with noise-proof headphones, or block it all out by absorbing yourself in a book. I choose the last of these options, so I get about an hour and a half per day to read books, which typically lets me read a book every week or so.

Right now, I'm taking a somewhat rare dabble into fiction, albeit historical fiction. The book is Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield, author of "The Legend of Bagger Vance". Its subtitle is "The Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae" (the literal translation of Thermopylae is "the hot gates", so named for the medicinal hot springs near the battleground, which is a narrow pass between rugged mountains and the sea). The battle pitted 300 elite Greek warriors in a last-ditch, "all-sire" (warriors with sons - since they were all slated to die in this battle, it was desired that their respective family lineages live on) suicide effort to buy time for the "real" Spartan army to assemble and be dispatched to fight the Persian army, supposedly numbered at 2 million.

The story is told through the 1st-person perspective of the sole Spartan survivor of the battle, Xeo, a squire who was captured on the battlefield in the Spartans' unsuccessful, though admirable and heroic, defeat at the hands of the advancing Persian empire. King Xerxes compels Xeo to tell him about Spartan army training, which he does, but what unfolds is more a telling of Greek culture than anything else.

Whether you're talking about the importance of acting honorably, male bonding, the warrior's code, or upholding your family's good name, the book gives gripping life to many cultural ideals that often get lost in cliche when we consider our own personal value systems. The battle and training scenes are pretty gory, but if you can stomach vivid descriptions of blood and other-bodily-fluids, it's a definite must-read for anyone who's interested in understanding the ancient roots of our culture (or for anyone who just enjoys military fiction). Either way, it's a tough one to put down once you get started.

It's meticulously researched, and I'm amazed at how much of our Western value systems arise from ancient Greek culture, both in military and civilian settings. Indeed, the book was recommended as a must-read for that very reason in Hugh Hewitt's book, "In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition".

I'm only about 2/3 of the way through it right now, but I think I'll make a habit of blogging my readings PRIOR to finishing the books, so that I don't accidentally give away any endings. As far as readability goes, there are a lot of ancient Greek words thrown in here and there, but the author uses the pretext of a captured foreign-language-speaker as a not-so-subtle excuse to throw in those words' translations right within the sentence. It makes for some choppy reading, but it's also educational in the sense of seeing a lot of etymological roots of words that are commonly used in English today. It's also a bit confusing at times, because there are lots of places where the timeline jumps around quite a bit - which I suppose also matches up with the pretext of a captured (and injured and exhausted!) slave. The jumps are very related in topic, but not in sequence, if you know what I mean. Apart from those two things (which actually add value to the story even if it makes for some disjointed reading), it's very readable and action-packed.

Highly recommended.